Obito of the Opera
by HarvestedHeart
Summary: Phantom of the Opera, done with Naruto characters, so basically a Naruto-Phantom crossover. Rin is our ingenue Christine, Kakashi is our Raoul, and Obito our Phantom. I do not own Naruto or Phantom, disclaimers are inside. Hope you all enjoy. Warning: Both Phantom and Naruto canon will be distorted some of the time. Please review! All feedback, even flames, are accepted :).
1. Chapter 1

**Because copyright exists, I cannot own Naruto, which is the product of Kishimoto. The songs from the Phantom of the Opera belong to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, while the general storyline belongs to Leroux and the aforementioned Webber and Rice. **

Sighing, she stared at the large stain on the front of the gown, wondering to herself when Tsunade-sama would cease drinking so much sake, at least for the sake of the costume department. Ah, well, Nohara Rin thought to herself as she dunked the evil-smelling garment into the crude tub . Sinking into the suds, the material seemed to hiss, as if perturbed by her impudence at attempting to clean it.

Love you too, Rin thought, smiling as her hands grabbed and twisted at the fabric of the dress, white soap suds dotting her palms.

She had never planned to work in the laundry of the Konoha Opera House. It had simply happened, one thing led to another, and her original plan had had to be abandoned thanks to reality. She thought this with no degree of false nonchalance. I could have been….it did no good to think of what could have been.

_Once, Rin-chan had a father._

_She had a father who taught her everything she knew._

_And then her father died._

_But he promised her one thing._

_He promised to send her an angel._

Meanwhile in the grand entrance….

"Look at those ballet girls! How youthful!" Maito Gai whispered to his silver-haired companion, straightening his forest-colored spandex suit as he walked.

"That's nothing. Wait 'til we get to the singers! Those are some real fine figures of women, perfect for immortalization in those novels I'm planning to write…" Jiraiya whispered in response, tucking his wild silver ponytail into the collar of his elaborate suit-jacket, giving a slight chuckle at the tickle of hair against his skin.

Gai let out a short bark of a laugh as they both stepped onto the stage before the people whose livelihoods they now were in control of, the different faces and class distinctions suddenly so obviously drawn. The dull, tired-looking laundry-women clumped in the lower seats, whilst the lead tenor Dan Kato and lead soprano, Tsunade occupied the higher rungs of the theatre, an exercise in status in action.

"Hello, opera staff and stars! You're all so very youthful!" Gai gushed loudly, stunning the ears of the cast and causing no small amount of angry whispers from those clearly past their prime, who no longer had illusions about rejuvenating their youth.

"As your new managers, we would like to introduce ourselves! I am Maito Gai, that's Gai-sama to all of you youthful people, and this is Jiraiya."

"An up-and-coming semi-professional novelist!" Jiraiya shouted above the clapping that had been expected at the introduction. "If I ask some of you young ladies to meet with me in my writing room for some inspiration, you wouldn't mind, would ya?"He smiled winningly at the masses of women, winking as he did so.

"They might not, but I would." A particularly striking women wearing a dress that appeared to envoke the texture of bandages, with long ebony hair and strangely crimson eyes, spoke up. "The young ladies, as you so call them," she went on, glaring specifically in the direction of the corps de ballet girls, "are professionals with a job to do. Your inspiration will have to be derived from their performances. As head of the corps, and as an acquaintance of the laundry-room head and the costumers, along with the singers themselves, I must say that I speak for us all when I state: We are simply too busy to allow your request."

One of the young ballerinas, a petite, spiky-haired former street urchin by name of Anko, yelled raucously from the stands in approval, while the rest of the young laundry girls and costumers, Rin included, sighed and clapped their appreciation.

"You go, Madame Kurenai!"

And so Jiraiya never quite got the inspiration he planned for, however upsetting that was for him.

The next few days were a whirlwind of preparations for the upcoming production of Hannibal. Tsunade, resplendent in red and gold, would be singing the lead along with Dan, while some of the laundry girls were recruited as background props, to sway amongst the ballerinas in an attempt at a fuller cast portrait, onion-grass patches in a flower-covered meadow.

Rin tugged at the tight give of the costume she wore, while attempting to cover her bared midriff with one hand. Some of the other girls, namely her friend Anko, appeared to be delighted at showing off their bare, flawless skin as they leaped and crossed their legs in mid-air, however Rin could not shake the feeling that her own stomach, just a bit too plump, was somehow not a welcome addition to the flocks of perfectly flat boards offered by the rest of the corps de ballet girls.

Madame Kurenai was in fine form, disciplining and praising in turns, always fair but gently so, a real lady, as Anko whispered to Rin after having a failed arabesque smoothly corrected. Her wild hair barely contained by a bun, she moved slowly among the rows of dancers, crimson eyes omnipresent in the minds of every laundry girl and ballerina alike.

Tsunade made her entrance through a loud blare from the orchestra, dressed in a decadent red and gold gown and elaborate headdress. The headdress, with six heavy tiers aching with gems and brass, seemed to Rin to almost dwarf the normally tall diva, though she acted as though it weighed no less than a gilded feather, singing through the arias with expert precision, giving every note her signature trill on the end, thrilling Rin so much with its power that she received a reprimand for nearly toppling over in the midst of the song.

Suddenly, the orchestra ceased playing, and the long, sour note of Tsunade's voice rang throughout the opera, a shrill caw that resonated around the theatre.

"Why have you stopped?! I just began that aria!" She waved at the conductor imperiously. "Play through it once again!"

The conductor looked shakily to Jiraiya, who, sighing, relinquished his plush seat and stood to face the furious diva.

"The notes were off, I take it?" He said to Tsunade, whilst the conductor nodded his head in panicked agreement.

"An outrage!" Tsunade shrieked. "My notes are never off!"

"Maybe after those trills your voice gave up, Blondie." Jiraiya smiled, staring in the direction of Tsunade's perfectly-shaped chest. "But you're still a star in all our books…"

Dan Kato, noticing the look with which Jiraiya flashed at Tsunade's breasts, pushed her aside and turned towards Jiraiya, angry pride dotting his features.

"Well, are you saying that you will replace her in the lead role?" Dan laughed, a short sharp bark. "Who could replace Tsunade?"

"Nohara Rin could!" Anko shouted, waving her hands up and down in a coarse effort to be recognized, spiky, barely there bun already coming lose in tendrils of ink-black hair.

"Anko!" Stunned, Rin turned to the staff, all of who had followed her voice to find a scared, skinny-looking young girl with mouse-brown hair, cute in a childish sort of way, they thought, but not diva material, not like the statuesque Tsunade. Tsunade even let out a snort as Dan hung his arms around her, staring daggers at Rin that made her hunch further inward, a mad attempt to obscure herself from their view.

"Rin's been taking lessons." Anko continued, oblivious to Rin's complaint and the cruel eyes of the crowd. "She's got a great teacher and she's really been improving. She sings a lot in the laundry room, when I go there to pick up my costumes and stuff."

"That's just a hobby…"Rin whispered, silently staring towards the eyes.

_It's nothing more than what I always wanted._

"Let her give it a shot, Jiraiya-sama, Gai-sama!" Anko darted through the crowd with the expertise of a weaver stitching a new thread through a tapestry, the smile on her face large, a genuine Chesire-cat grin.

"Can't hurt." Gai turned to Jiraiya with a shrug. "She is youthful-looking anyway."

"Fine, if you like that better than raw sex appeal…" Jiraiya muttered under his breath. Realizing the look of barely-disguised hurt on Rin's face, he guiltily shouted at the conductor to begin the aria.

Rin took a breath.

_The sweet murmurings of a violin played by calloused hands. _

_The Yellow Flash, they called him, because his playing was fast and elegant, a stone skimming water._

_He wasn't her relation, but he was Father._

_And there were two other students….two boys…._

Remembering the past and those she no longer had, Rin felt the ever-present sadness in her chest blossom again, and the melody simply rang out from the past she remembered, sadly soft and true, with no decoration of the notes but the emotion in her voice, which soared high and sweet.

**Think of me, think of me when we said goodbye.**

**Imagine me, once in a while, please, promise me you'll try.**

**When you find that once again you long,**

**To take your heart back and be free,**

**If you ever find a moment, spare a thought for me…**

The music ceased and Rin felt the release, the release of the song's power still ringing in her ears.

_At least I did it. At least I sang for them just once._

In the silence, applause erupted from the stands, laundry women and corps de ballet girls cheering, Anko and the two managers leading the clapping, standing….

For her.

Rin stood there, elated but awkward, a serving girl elevated to queen.

Silencing the audience with wing-like hand-waves, Jiraiya spoke in a business-like tone.

"How many hours do we need to make her presentable for this role?"

Rin's heart nearly soared from its chest.

Thank you, she whispered, knowing that her benefactor had heard her song.

Thank you.


	2. Chapter 2

"I hope you will find the show to your enjoyment, Hatake-sama." The attendant smiled nervously at the masked, gray-haired young man in the midnight-colored suit.

"I hope I shall as well, considering I had no plans to previously attend." Kakashi said irritably, straightening his suit as he spoke. "I simply have to provide money to the place as a patron, as per my father's will. Attendance was never in the contract."

The attendant laughed, the first genuine expression he'd shown the entire night, leaving Kakashi so stunned he himself began to chuckle underneath his ever-present mask of black cloth, his one good eye narrowing in surprise mirth.

"Oh, well." He wheezed after the sudden attack of laughter, feeling the inside of his mask dotting with traces of saliva. "I did study music for some time. Who knows? Maybe I'll recognize a song or something."

After a raucous but pleasant greeting by the two managers, one of which had forced into his hands a ludicrously small stack of paper labeled "Icha Icha First Draft" for his appraisal, Hatake Kakashi sat in Box Six, awaiting the beginnings of _Hannibal_ with a sort of bemused, nostalgic smile beneath the mask.

How long had it been since then? Seven, six years, since he'd studied music theory and technique under Namikaze-san? An unorthodox teacher, to be sure….Kakashi had traveled to several different lands under his tutelage. While Namikaze-san had claimed it was in order to study other musical styles, Kakashi felt the man simply enjoyed presenting his pieces in front of new crowds in order to recapture the first sense of awe.

For the Yellow Flash's music was awe and glory made real.

His own father, the White Fang, a member of Konoha's aristocracy, had been a great admirer of the Yellow Flash. That was, the father he remembered, not the one whose death had called him back from those musical excursions of Namikaze-san's.

Yes. It was the seven year anniversary of his father's suicide.

They all believed in his failure, the people. He had taken the money from the peasants, a tyrannical despot. This didn't correlate to Kakashi's view of the stern but caring man who had raised a son single-handedly, even attempting to instill some degree of musical appreciation and skill in the boy.

Well, he'd never been very talented. But then, neither were the ragtag group of students the Yellow Flash assembled for himself.

There had been a girl, he remembered that. Brown-haired, doe-eyed skinny one. He remembered her glances at him as a child of twelve and smiled in the mask.

The other one….he was best left unmentioned, and as the curtain sprang up joyously, red giving way to painted scenery, Kakashi was free to forget the nameless boy and watch the beginnings of the show.

The first act was largely uneventful, and he took to reading the stack of papers, which seemed to dribble with sensual descriptions of impossibly idealistic women with heaving breasts and luscious complexions. Kakashi liked it, though secretly he was glad to be the only one in Box Five reading the drivel.

Suddenly, the first strands of the opening second act began to ring, and sighing, Kakashi placed the stack of papers onto the red velvet seat next to him, finally condescending to watch the second act.

**Think of me…**

The voice, alien yet familiar, stirred uneasiness in him. Had he heard this song before? No. He'd never heard of the production before tonight, so it wasn't the strains of melody that brought back such an awkward feeling of de ja vu.

**Think of me fondly when we've said goodbye…**

_He is twelve years old again and still has both eyes._

_He packs his bags for leaving systematically, barely pausing until he reaches the violin on the edge of his bed._

_Rubbing the bow against the taunt strings, he plays a requiem, soft and silently, night music in the heat of the day._

_Final strains still echoing, he drops the bow and violin into the items that he will discard._

_What need was there for this? _

_What need was there for anything but necessity and pain?_

_It was a distraction, colored lights spinning, fireworks, blazing bright, but over in an instant._

_"Kakashi-kun?"_

_That girl in the doorway, petite and brown-haired._

_Rin….._

And there she was again, up on the stage, in front of them all, singing with the fierce beauty of a wounded bird, injured yet strong. He recalled that she'd never been that wonderful a singer even under Namikaze-san, though the man, to his credit, had never lost patience with her tinny soprano, even praising her at the smallest of accomplishments.

Oh, if only he could see her now.

He stared at her, noticing how she had changed and yet stayed the same, her figure lengthening and developing on its own into something new, something not exactly beautiful, but strong.

A sudden thought occurred to him that he might go see her after the performance….just as an old friend, of course. After all…

_"If you're really going to leave…."she smiles hesitantly, and then presses a letter into his hands. "Father asked me to give you this."_

_"Thank you." He takes hold of the sliver of white paper, feeling the bare texture between the interior and exterior, knowing that it is the barrier from a farewell._

_Suddenly, he feels spidery arms around his frame, and her face looks up at him._

_"Goodbye Kakashi-kun."_

_And the arms disengage._

_He is finally left floating in his own confusion._

She crescendoed as the orchestra loudened, her mouth open in a perfect O as she sang the final fierce note. Applause broke out and Kakashi found himself standing, his hands clapping of their own accord, shouting "Bravo" at the top of his voice.

Suddenly, he wondered if she'd even remember him. It had been long ago, after all.

"She may not remember me," he thought simply "But I remember…"

He decided to awaken her memory the only way he knew how.

…

The powder-white dressing room felt fragile to Rin, almost as if it was about to collapse under the weight of dainty snow-white curtains and strands of pearls hanging from the ceiling. She shuddered with excitement and not dread, however, when she thought of her new promotion.

Laundry-girl to singer! A thrill, a wondrous thrill! Father would be so proud….

If he'd been alive to see her, she thought as her throat tightened.

"**So here's where you've been hiding….You were perfect**!" Anko shrieked girlishly, winding her arms around Rin's neck with glee, nearly choking her until she loosened her grip suddenly.

With a quizzical look on her pointed, elfin features, Anko stated**" I only wish I knew your secret…. Who is your great tutor?"**

Rin smiled, and staring into those deep dark eyes of Anko, sang, pitch-perfect:

**"Father once spoke of an angel…**

**I used to dream he'd appear,**

**Now as I sing I can sense him…**

**And I know he's here!"**

Anko, puzzled, looked to Rin for signs of calling off the joke, but Rin's face was as childishly believing as an infant reciting a well-known poem or story. Patting the white velvet seat she rested on, Rin went on, sweetly:

**"Here in this room, he calls me softly,**

**Somewhere inside, hiding…**

**Somehow I know he's always with me.**

**He the unseen genius…."**

**"Rin, you must have been dreaming, stories like this can't come true. Rin, you're talking in riddles….And it's not like you!"**Anko harmonized, playing along to please Rin, yet at the same time looking for an exit. She reasoned to leave and inform Madame Kurenai: Rin had obviously gone mad and needed a reality check from someone more sensitive than Anko.

Suddenly, the door pushed open, and in stepped a tall, gray-haired man with a mask covering his features.

"Kakashi?" Rin's mind raced attempting to fill the gap of her knowledge, she stared at the single dark eye left uncovered.

"Rin-chan."The familiar voice, albeit deeper and more masculine. She distinctly felt a subtle change in her heartbeat as she looked over the old acquaintance.

"I guess I'll leave you both to it then!" Smiling cheekily, Anko darted back into the door. Maybe Rin would at least forget her delusions for the mysterious admirer, she secretly hoped.

"So…."His voice ended the brief silence. "I see your dreams have come to fruition. I always thought they would." Through his mask, he smiled, knowing that his narrowing eye would tell her of the smile she couldn't see.

Her own face burst into a wide grin, and Kakashi realized finally how pretty she'd become in seven years. Not seductive and curvaceous like Tsunade, with narrowed eyes and red lips, but a sort of genuine, truthful prettiness, a sweet smile and natural features.

"Surely I wasn't that marvelous…."

"You were." The solemnity in his own voice surprised even him, and as her features turned shocked, he added awkwardly "Your voice…was very beautiful."

They both reddened, though Kakashi silently thanked Kami-sama for the mask covering his lower face and right eye to cover his own ruby cheeks.

"So…."He again had to continue the awkward yet strangely pleasant conversation, but this time he would add a twist of his own. "Perhaps…I could take you out sometime? To catch up?" He hoped, stupidly that she would reply immediately, but instead they found themselves in another spiral of blushing until she hesitantly grinned and said shyly:

"I'd like that."

He turned to leave, sure that he'd missed the cab to take him back to Hatake Manor, when he felt slender arms around him, longer but mostly unchanged from his past, still clinging gently and yet effectively stopping him in his tracks.

"I missed you, Kakashi-kun."

The mouth under the mask curves upward.

"I missed you too, Rin-chan."

…..

As soon as the door closed behind Kakashi, the familiar voice boomed out, omnipresent, from no source, magnificent and towering. Almost as it began its fierce song, the lights went out in the dressing room, with only a bare candle left to illuminate the room with a subtle, threatening glow.

**"Insolent boy, this slave of fashion! **

**Basking in your glory!**

**Ignorant fool, this brave young suitor, **

**Sharing in MY triumph!"**

Stupefied, Rin looked around her to find only the powder-white room. Hesitantly, she carried on the melody, her heart pounding with an excited sort of fear at his presence and his tone.

**"Angel I hear you,**

**Speak, I listen,**

**Stay by my side,**

** Guide me….**

**Angel my soul was weak,**

**Forgive me,**

**Enter at last…Master."**

The voice took on a new, cajoling, tender tone as her angel and teacher carried on the melody.

**"Flattering child you shall know me…**

**See why in shadow I hide…**

**Look at your face in the mirror…**

**I am there inside!"**

_Tentatively the maiden steps forth into the mirror that is no more a solid object,_

_But a simple veil over a fog, a simple covering, a mask on the truth behind itself,_

_The fog reaches for her with swirling white arms, grasping but never reaching her,_

_And in the whiteness, a black cloak decked with faded scarlet clouds pulls her closer._

_An orange mask, spiraling and swirling the misty haze claims her, a gloved hand grasping her own,_

_Surprisingly tender, surprisingly gentle big hands._

_She walks past shaking candles giving off spasms of light, _

_Steps onto a gondola over lake glossed in mist and candlelight,_

_And sings with her angel._

Those who have seen your face draw back in fear,

I am the mask you wear

**_It's me they hear…._**

**_Your spirit and my voice, in one combine…the Phantom of the Opera is here, inside your mind…._**

**_Sing my angel of music!_**

**_SING FOR ME!_**


	3. Chapter 3

**_Night time sharpens, heightens each sensation,_**

**_Darkness stirs and _**

**_Wakes imagination…_**

She feels the voice hypnotize her eyes open, and with a jolt, sees that she is lying on a bed of black lace. Horrible, scratchy stuff that surrounds her like a minor sea, waving around her. Grimacing, she detangles herself from the blankets and surveys the immediate area.

The bed itself is made from one piece of marble, carved into a stone swan….

She laughs. It's the sort of bed that looks as though it was made for some strange fetish, a sort of gilded "paradise", the sort of bed Jiraiya would probably write epic poetry about.

"Well, this is lovely…and just a little wrong…"

She hears a chuckle, breaking the spell of the voice for a moment of clarity before the melody returns again. It is sung in the same tenor, low and soothing, that brought her here….

**_You alone can make my song take flight…_**

**_Help me make…the Music of the Night…._**

She listens, spellbound but something in her soul struggling to the forefront. What? I alone? My voice? At first she is flattered, flattered that someone with a voice as beautiful as that of her benefactor would even consider her, whose voice had once been that of a tin whistle, empty and pitchless, his muse. However, something in the tone of the words seems to ring wrong in her ears, horribly wrong, as if off-key. That's not it though, his notes are always pitch-perfect…

Shaking her head to clear thoughts, she opens the curtain (more black lace tickling her fingertips as she recoils) and sees scene before her.

She is on a sort of rocky island in the middle of a lake, where a wooden boat is tethered to the granite shore. Eyes traveling upwards, she sees the green luminescence of the island fall onto a small, ornate piano, the space around it strung with velvet curtains and mirrors reflecting the orange masked man sitting at the piano, along with his cape of embroidered red clouds.

Sitting at that piano, her benefactor plays a complex melody build of interwoven notes so unlike that fluidly fit together, unlikely pieces matching in a puzzle. The song is hopeful, but tentative, almost like a schoolgirl's first flirtation, first kiss and first love.

Suddenly, she is overcome with a deep desire that seems to burn in her very core, to rip off that mask. It is quick and inexplicable, an urge to see her benefactor, to gaze at the true glory of her angel. But, most importantly, to know.

_Father, you said you would send me the Angel when you were gone…_

_Did you really mean that you would come back?_

_Are you my Angel, Father?_

Surprising herself, she edges nearer to the man and begins singing a neat little melody, feeling a new deceptive nature bursting to life.

**I remember there was mist,**

**Swirling mist upon a cold, glossy lake,**

**And in the boat there was a….man.**

Turning his head, the man behind that orange-swirled mask seems to stare at her from some unseen eye-hole. She continues towards him until they touch, her arms caressing him, at first hesitant, but, as his head inclines, more passionately, her arms like slithering snakes over his neck and the mask.

**Who was that voice in the shadows,**

**Who is the face in the mask?**

His head attempts to jerk away from her upon the last line, but not before she holds in her hands the orange vortex, held the only protection from that face.

Stifling a scream, she stares at the grim visage.

It is bruised, one side hideously malformed, permanently stuck in a grimace of agony, eye rolled and bloodshot, a monster's pupil and iris. All the skin is bunched up on that side in folds, in wrinkles. The eye, blind and cloud gray around the redness, stares into her rather than at her, recoiling at her horror.

In an instant, she feels a hit at her knees and collaspes. Above her, she sees…..her angel turned demonic, kicking around himself in a fury, smashing a mirror in his frenzy.

**Damn you!**

**You little lying Delilah!**

And then, the fury of the ghost (somehow she cannot reconcile this visage with her angel, and yet she will not attach him to a demon either) subsides, as he too, falls, a painting of cruel fate, his face hidden behind pale, bony hands.

**Damn you…**

**Curse you…**

But she is not looking at him, but remembering. As his foot had connected to the mirror, shattering glass, she had seen the side of his face that was smooth, the side of his face…

"Obito?" Her voice is a squeak.

"Call me what you like." His voice is hoarse from the screams of anger he emitted only a minute ago. "It doesn't matter what my name is or was, Rin-chan."

"It does to me!" She suddenly finds anger, and it surprises her in its intensity. "You were dead! Crushed by a boulder while we traveled as children…."

"As you can see," Half of Obito's face smiled, a tragic recollection of the smiling, cheerful boy who had followed her as a girl, "It didn't do the job well enough."

She tries to protest, tries to say that he shouldn't speak this way about his accident, how his face changes nothing, how she will lead him out of here and be his inspiration. She will save him from the world, and she will be his friend once more.

But she cannot tell so many lies, and they stop her tongue.

He sings, throat choked by sobs, a soft melody as he clutches the hideous side of himself:

**Stranger than you dreamt it, **

**Can you even bear to look,**

**This loathsome gargoyle who seems a beast but secretly,**

**Secretly, yearns for Heaven, **

**Yes secretly , secretly, dreams of beauty.**

**Rin-chan…**

**Rin-chan…**

His voice aches with devotion and love, crestfallen. He's sorry I've seen him like this, Rin thinks as she wonders what to say, what words to comfort him with, how to soothe wounds. And he loves me? How? Why?

I can't love this.

The revelation is cruel as it sinks in, but she knows it is true. Despite everything, his kindness, their past, she cannot bring herself to caress, to ever wake up beside him. But his inspiration…He made me great, a voice protests in her mind. He helped me where even Father failed, he made me feel as though I had purpose….

But she is more superficial than she apparently knew, and is repulsed by him, even as she hates herself, even as she pities him. Pity. Such a cruel fate to be left to.

She simply stares at him, forces herself to see that horrible, hideous side until she cannot stand it a moment longer and pushes the mask back into his hands.

Somehow, as he grimly ties it back onto that face, she has a sudden feeling of failure overcome her.

_There was a boy who traveled with Kakashi and father and I….another student._

_He wasn't anything special, just a boy with jet black hair and eyes, a pianist with little to no talent…._

_He helped me release birds when I saw them trapped and cried in one of the cities. I must have been six years old, him a few months older than me. _

_Smiling. He was always smiling, and he held open the doors with a finger over that grin as the birds were let out. He let me open the next door, and in silence we found a bond. _

_When we walked, the three of us, into the mountains when I was twelve, near that time Kakashi left._

_And then the first rocks fell, getting larger and larger until, finally, Obito was underneath them, and Kakashi was pulling me aside but I was gripping Obito's hand and it…_

_Was all over, I thought. _

_But maybe not. _

"Come." Obito, already inside the boat, paddle in hand, gestures over to her. "Those two fools who run my theatre will be missing you, those jerks."

And despite herself, despite her intolerance, despite her self-hatred, the childishness in that last statement wrings a small smile out of her.


End file.
